This post is inspired by the mentor burnout post located here http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=116658
We all are very familiar with the 6 week robot deadline, something that amounts to extreme stress for students, mentors, and parents, I have come to question, with very little of an answer myself, if 6 is the perfect number. I know that many teams have very different work-time schedules, our team goes the route of every day after school (3:20pm) till about 9:30pm or 9:45pm on weekdays and on weekends we go from 11:00am (or around that) till 9:30pm or 11:00pm. This is a very tiring work schedule and you can tell it on the face of the team by the end of the season. I know teams that only meet periodically and you only show up when your specific task you can do is required, and I can imagine that being less tiring, but also causes a significant loss in robot capabilities. Is 6 weeks the perfect amount of time, I can’t imagine anyone having the urge to shorten it, it proves difficult enough already to get a top of the line robot up and running, but should this time frame be expanded, or would this further stretch apart the skill level of the different types of teams. I myself am satisfied with 6, I believe that it provides you with ample time to make an “ok” robot, and provides you with a challenging time frame to make a “great” robot, and I feel that is how it should be. Please submit your opinion to this thread, I am looking forward to hearing it! 
I don’t understand why you made a new thread to discuss the same thing.
- Sunny G.
That thread was about mentor burnout. This thread appears to be about the length of build in general terms.
I think that 6 weeks is as close to perfect as we can get. I also am always amazed to hear about the work schedules of other teams like yours. Our team meets Tuesdays from 5:30-8:30, Thursdays from 3:30-6:30, and then Saturdays from 9-5. We usually have to add another few meetings towards the end of the year when we find ourselves behind but I think that our schedule works out very well and every year we have a very competitive robot.
We never have too much of a problem with student burnout each season. Obviously everyone gets tired but we try and limit the amount that everyone works. For example, if there is a day that is devoted only to programming testing, not everyone is asked to be there. In fact, we might dissuade people from being there and ask them instead to take some time to focus a little extra on schoolwork.
I think that 6 weeks is as short of a time as we could go and I would not want anything more. I like FIRST being as much of a challenge as possible. I feel like if FIRST wasn’t as much of a challenge, it wouldn’t be accomplishing its goals as well.
I feel the same way. The biggest issues for build season, in my eyes, are the extra days teams at multiple regionals get, days that are more useful than any during the six weeks. However, this has already been mentioned in several threads. Still, 6 weeks makes build season interesting, not an impossible 5 weeks or an easier 7 weeks.
6 = 3 + 2 + 1 so it is the sum of its own proper divisors and thereby satisfies the definition of a perfect number.
But I guess that is not what you meant.
EDIT: there are other perfect numbers, for example 28 = 14 + 7 + 4 + 2 + 1. So 6 is not “the” perfect number.
I think a lot of build season’s length is less about progression and performance and more about logistics. There’s a limited set of dates available for Worlds, and I doubt they want thus to conflict with APs more. That sets your end. Qualifying events need a certain number of weeks, particularly in the district model but also due to things like spring breaks at college venues. Combine that with Week 0 and limit it on the other end with winter holidays (for both practical and parity reasons), and 6 basically is the magic number. There can be some years where it’s possible to squeeze out more, but 6 is consistently safe if you intend to bag before the first official event. FIRST has to do these venue contracts rather far in advance, and likely not entirely in sync with one another.
That said, my issue is not so much with the time between kickoff and the first event, but rather with what happens during and after the first event. If they’re seeking parity in machine access time–though to be honest, I’m not sure they’re even trying to–why isn’t every allowed to unnatural every competition weekend? (Maybe ban the one before your own event for regionals to allow international shipping.)
The more I’ve thought about the discussion in ‘that other thread’, the more I’ve warmed up to the suggestion by “Ike” to allow some Out-of-bag time each week. We get 6 hours here in Michigan before each 2 day event (regular district event, not MSC or CMP), which gives 2 or 3 6-hour chunks.
This approach still imposes the “Deadline”, preventing you from building your robot after week 1 events, giving everyone a breather, and minimizing the need for a practice bot (although they still have value since you only unbag before competitions).
The absolute biggest advantage that this “personal” time affords is that the time is much more efficiently used than competition time. At a competition, you have a lot of people around, and you must share practice areas, machine shops, etc. At CMP we spent TWO HOURS waiting in line for one 10 minute practice session where we could leave our robot in place and test the shooter, if we had the opportunity to do this before crating the bot, we would have saved a ton of stress! Events are not a good place to develop even small features, and the more people who attempt to do so, the less able everyone is to do so, due to shared resources.
Providing a certain amount of unbag time will reduce the crowding of practice facilities, reduce stress at events, and improve the competitiveness of events. Limiting that time will keep teams from going overboard once competition season begins (even though many already do with practice bots). It also lets you develop features that you cannot test on the practice field (like center-line autonomous).
Those that are leery of unbag time leading to making everyone more competitive, based on how much time they spend building, ignore one important thing:
Every design has a plateau, where more time/effort will net minimal gain. I would rather see every team reach that plateau. It kills me to see designs that are really cool, but only “almost work”.
And of course, 6 Weeks + 6 hrs each week after that, so 6 would still remain the perfect number